Belly dancing Posture & Technique

Belly dance posture video:

Video Summary:
Hello, and now I will tell you something about the posture. Okay, maybe you have noticed that the warm up was also designed to align you and to work on your posture and to center you. And now I will tell you all that is necessary for your belly dance practice. Okay. The most important thing is the feet. So you can start just shifting your weight a little bit, getting a feeling for the ground for your feet and then you go front and back so you have like a circle on your feet and you really feel – Are your feet relaxed?

They should be relaxed. Through all of our practices and training the feet will get a lot of muscles and they will get a nice posture too. Okay, so you notice that maybe your feet are a little bit, like cramping, then you can relax your toes and imagine they will just get longer and longer and longer and relaxed.

Okay then the second most important thing is that you have the toes always aligned with the knees, so you never have torsion in the knees. Whenever the feet go out, you have to turn all your leg, okay? Then the knees are never locked. Never. Maybe later when you’re a professional dancer you can play with this too, but for the beginners I would really say, don’t lock your knees. It’s dangerous and it’s better you have a nice relaxed posture like this and then you can bend them and straighten and bend and straighten. And this would be locked. So this is like ahhh. Very stiff and it really hurts a little bit.

Okay so, your knees are always very soft and whenever I tell you – you have to bend your knees, you have to bend your knees a little bit more than you might think. This is a little bit complicated and not very many of you are flexible and all the muscles are a little bit tense but we will work on this.

Okay, then you put your hand front and back on your pelvis. And you might feel your coccyx here. This should just be pointing towards the floor, so just like hanging. This is the normal posture of the average woman, a sway back. Some people think, maybe okay then, I will put a lot of tension in my belly muscles and then they tuck this belly under. And this is not very good, because this is also not very efficient and puts a lot of tension in your hip flexors and your belly muscles and everything, because it’s not necessary.

So just try to always have it like the feeling of hanging, so your pelvis is hanging on your spine. And if you’ll think, but when I relax everything in my pelvis is just hanging it’s just a swayback. Okay then I tell you, you take your swayback, bend your knees a little bit and then you try to align yourself again. So that you feel like something built up when one over another and then you will see this might relax a little bit. If not, this is no problem in your first lesson. We’ll work on this all the time and you can imagine that you’ll relax in this way and in this was all the time whenever we practice.

This is very important. Okay, and then from this beautiful hip you can also imagine its heavy and it’s hanging on your spine so you can imagine a hip like this and it’s really hanging. This was the hip, and you can imagine you would be a flower – this is your stem here this head is your beautiful head of the flower and its always free and relaxed and it always feels easy, so whenever you feel yourself practicing like this, this don’t feel good on your head, so try to figure out – ah, this was the feeling that I wanted to have, the feeling of freedom – that you’re free to look around, and really feeling good.

Okay, all these muscles we will build. They will help you to lift yourself up very elegantly so you can imagine this will be like the leaves from the beautiful flower. And then you can really comfortably relax your shoulder blades, relax your shoulders, relax your clavicles, and open your rib cage here, the sternum, everything feels like free and open and the back also feels very open.

So it’s like you’re very open and free and feeling good and have a strong muscle corset that is holding you up. So this is it, basically, and whenever we’re working or we’re having the dress, I will remind you of these things, but maybe you should watch this tape sometimes again and again so you can really check, a-ha, a-ha, do I still think of having the relaxed feet, do I still think of having the relaxed knees or do I still lock it? Most beginners lock the knees, have the swayback and wonder why the moves don’t look like they look with me. Okay so this was it and I hope you watch this again sometimes.